


Hell Calls Hell

by C1ytemnestra



Category: Homestuck, Original Work
Genre: Angst, Content warnings will be updated, Fantrolls, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Mostly hurt and not much comfort at the moment, Original Character Death(s)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-06
Updated: 2017-08-06
Packaged: 2018-12-12 00:10:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11725449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/C1ytemnestra/pseuds/C1ytemnestra
Summary: The questionable adventures of a seadweller who really needs to get a hobby. Perhaps he'll grow as a person, someday? Not likely.





	Hell Calls Hell

**Author's Note:**

> This story was originally just practice, and while it remains so, I'm now attached and further chapters are in the works.  
> Apologies in advance!

Krakan already felt abominable having to pay for any kind of interpersonal connection. His current state didn't help.

The seadweller’s heels clicked on the floor in time with each solemn step across the polished marble. This whole hive was merely provisional; furniture for eyes, not bodies, save for the respiteblock used when he needed a bit of thorough languishing (often) or when someone else needed a place to crash (rare), and all the once-pristine mirrors, trinkets, rare books and baubles now bore a fine layer of dust as testament to his neglect. Reminiscent of the home of his youth, the more livable, less stuffy quarters were all downstairs below the water, accessible from a trapdoor or a sub-aquatic entrance. Not that he spent much time down there either; it was largely provisional, too.

Passing mirrors reminded him of his recent decline as he idly chatted with his paid invitee (a charming rustblood, delicately sharp-tongued, about his own height barefoot, androgynous and angular, reminded him of a few people he took to avoiding dwelling on - he'd procured their services more than once before, and for the life of him still couldn't remember their name in the present moment). He'd lost weight - he'd never exactly been lithe, a substantial amount of padding only giving way during a sweep-or-so period of being a complete recluse, some time ago, and then cut right to the chase of reducing himself to little more than bones, he'd always joke it was the best his cheekbones had ever looked - lost sleep, and looked completely drained. Exhausted. Sallow, perhaps. Hollow. ...Disheveled. Dissolving. Limp strands of hair fell over his brow (he pushed one such piece back absently, metal fingertips warmer than his own flesh briefly grazing skin). All the precisely applied makeup held fast but couldn't obscure the lifelessness of his eyes.

His arrangement with the rustblood was, as far as he knew, informal, willful, and driven entirely by money. Krakan felt an emotional connection, of course, as he so often did so quickly, but couldn't fathom its reciprocation. They had to maintain some degree of professional detachment, he told himself. (Not to mention, who'd love an unattractive, self-pitying, self-destructive, pitiful, pathetic, useless excuse for a member of the complete opposite side of the hemospectrum? Certainly not someone who probably did this sort of thing with anyone who would pay and treat them decently. The idea of the rustblood seeing other people, even in an equally detached manner as with himself, evoked a pang of jealousy, a twinge deep in his stomach.)

Even trying to maintain some emotional distance, he really ought to remember their name.

Xerais?

Cancia?

Rilani?

Were these just other trolls’ names sifted from Krakan’s subconscious? Past lovers, past flings, past aliases of past prostitutes? He was really too young for this, his internal dialogue felt like that of a long-retired high ranking officer or politician of his caste. He wasn't supposed to be this jaded, this lecherous, this world-weary, at merely...what was it, eleven? Twelve? He told people older. Twenty. Fifty. A hundred. Three hundred. It depended, typically, on how honest he felt like being, how much he needed to hide to keep a straight face. The rustblood knew Krakan to be around a hundred and seventy sweeps, even if he had been inconsistent about that factoid well within their range of hearing.

While he was caught up introspecting, the idle chitchat was entirely driven by his mouth. He had probably said several, if not many, thoughtless and demeaning things, especially as, outside of what they might think of him for it, he subconsciously meant every dig and backhanded compliment.  _ You're quite clever for your caste, darling, you're quite lovely. From a distance I could almost have mistaken you for a highblood _ . The typical garbage, he could only assume. Typical and shallow, like he was.

In the respiteblock, a cushy room outfitted with a large bed (exotic, expensive) with gauzy curtains (less exotic, also expensive) and a small couch (uncomfortable, very expensive), he took conscious conversational control again.

“You’ll remember, love, I have the worst memory for names. It's no excuse, really - I ought to do something about it, but all the time in the world won't be enough when it comes down to it.” He coaxed their coat off, tossed it on the thing calling itself a couch, continued: “Remind me, wouldn't you?”

He got a smile, of course. They were too accommodating. “Belona,” they said. The coat, and the rest of Belona’s clothes, had a gentle floral air, now tainted with Krakan’s own cigarettes-and-citrus he was only ever tangentially aware of. He used to be painfully perceptive of his discolored fingertips and the lingering stench of smoke under all the perfume, but that was when he had anyone to impress, anywhere to go, any dreams to achieve. Heavens, that was edgy.

Belona was perched on their toes in black, strapped heels sharp enough on every edge to pose a serious threat as a weapon, leaning back against the exotic, expensive bed, eyes resting lightly on Krakan in his momentary silence. “Belona,” he repeated back to them. “I don't know how I'd forgotten that. Even the feeling’s marvelous. Just the sensation of your name on my tongue.”

He took their hand in his, feeling the calluses as his eye met theirs, their smile likely a slightly more convincing mirror of his own. Seamlessly, they came to face one another, the room disappearing around them as Krakan came to be lost in the moment - caught up in Belona’s eyes, then lips, then contours, then skin, flesh, their very pulse, so much warmer, so much more tangible, so much faster, so much stronger than his own.

 

At some point during the following events, Krakan managed to escape the respiteblock and return with a bottle of some expensive liqueur and some inkling that Belona might be genuinely enjoying themself. Out of desperation grew enthusiasm, and he was somewhat more alive than at any point in recent memory. There was conversation. There were  _ jokes _ . Krakan couldn't measure exactly how much of his laughter derived to some degree from malice, but the percentage was significantly lower than usual as he found himself enjoying someone's company in a reciprocal fashion for the first time in...he didn't know how long.

On this realization, Krakan, drunk and emotional, found himself weeping into Belona more than copulating, and Belona, drunk but with a relatively better handle on these things, soothed him into some kind of complacency and they wound the matter up side by side on the sheets.

Krakan reached over to his jacket, a crumpled heap on the end table, fished out a lighter and a pack of cigarettes.

“I feel so old fashioned,” he mused aloud. “Dove, don't you think this feels...doesn't this seem like a scene out of an old film? Old, old film, dear, you know...black and white, all glamour and weird censorship. Mm, want one?”

Belona declined the offered cigarette, Krakan lit the one in his mouth. “There's only so much I can risk if I want to even live to twenty,” they said. “So a film before my time? It must be pretty old if prostitution, inter-caste relationships and crying during sex was considered ‘glamorous.’ Must be  _ way _ before my time.” A sip from the obnoxious and cloying liqueur.

“I'll pay you extra not to mention the crying during sex bit to anyone else alive. Oh, I just meant…” He thought on it, arms folded. “This. The two of us shoulder to shoulder in the afterglow, smoking, talking. We're neither of us the most classical people, love, I do think we can agree on that, but it's a lovely moment.”

He caught a glimpse of Belona peripherally, a smile on their face. “It is. I think we can only call it somewhat lovely, but for what it's worth, it's the full ‘somewhat.’ Say.” A shift in tone. “How much do you want to get into the talking part?”

Krakan turned his head to face them. “How do you mean?”

“I mean that if you wanted I could try to help with some of your dilemmas I notice. I know you well enough, and you have some time left.” Propped on their elbows now, they looked with a strange, subdued intensity into his face. “I'm not bad at reading people, which helps, even with just how much you usually talk to me.”

He brought himself up on the pillows a little to counter Belona’s dominance in the situation. “Dilemmas?” he asked, an automatic wall of defense set. “I don't know what you're talking about.”

“I won't drag it out of you if you don't want to talk about it, Mister Krakan, it's not my job to make you do anything.”

“There's  _ nothing _ to  _ talk _ about,” he snapped, sitting up fully. “If you want to turn this into a therapy session, sweetheart, by  _ all _ means drag some other poor, dysfunctional  _ reject _ into it! However, I  _ think _ you'll find,” he growled, “There is  _ nowhere _ you can bring the current conversation that would arouse anything of interest to you, you and your pesky, nosy - just get out.” He stood. He knew he was losing Belona, right now. There was a chance, and he was destroying it. “Get out of this block, get out of my fucking hive - GET UP!” 

They were frozen for a moment, now jumped to attention, scrambling to their feet, out of the bed, grabbing for their clothes and shoes, wide eyes and contracted pupils betraying what their otherwise trained poker face was wise not to show. 

“Get out of my hive,” Krakan repeated, not bothering with his own clothes for the moment. “Get out of my hive, get what I fucking gave you OUT of your system, do you want me to MAKE you? Get over here.” 

Belona wasn't an idiot. Long coat and shoes on, clothes near enough to be donned in safety elsewhere, they made for the door. He didn't blame them for not wanting to be found washed up on the shore, bloody and broken and gutted as they likely had seen those they knew, on occasion. Fortunately for Belona, they could run in heels, and Krakan didn't follow them. He could see himself in his minds eye, violet in the face, quaking with rage and doing nothing; a caricature, all in all. He screamed threats and obscenities until he heard the front door open - they didn't bother to close it - then fell silent.

Belona, on paid time, was a lovely person. He knew nothing about them genuinely, as their own troll, or their inner life, and never thought of such. Belona was much too kind to him, let him get much too close, and he would have had to kill them had they kept trying. At least now they would stay away without question, and probably spread the word. There would be rumors about Krakan, and the would multiply, and they would contort and receive embellishment until someone heard Belona was eviscerated in that very bed. It wouldn't be far from the truth, such things had happened.

**Author's Note:**

> The title draws from a Latin proverb (abyssus abyssum incovat, also apparently the title of a couple metal albums) I thought fit the general...you know. It works as a itle, anyway.  
> Also, constructive criticism is appreciated by all means. Thank you for reading this far! I can't promise the next chapter will be out soon, but it will happen.


End file.
